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Making A Difference – Thoughts, Observations and Opinions
This is Dave Brock’s Blog.
It offers my views on a variety of business, sales, marketing, and leadership topic. My goal is to make a difference for you, the reader, in both your professional and personal lives.
Latest Posts
Silly Me, I Thought Selling Was Supposed To Generate Revenue!
I’ve always been under the impression that revenue generation (quota) was the key objective for sales people. One of my own key metrics and that of the teams I’ve managed is Revenue–sometimes orders, sometimes revenue growth. But always, it’s somehow been tied to money coming in the door as a result of my work with prospects and customers. I’ve always focused my time on finding customers that are interested in my solutions, who want to make a change, and who are willing to invest money in achieving the results they expect. That’s a fundamental principle in qualifying. It’s always seemed to be very important–I don’t […]
The Bar Is Being Raised For Both Buyer And Seller
“More has changed in buying and selling in the past 5 years than in all prior history.” I’ve talked about this a lot, everyone is. It’s becoming almost hackneyed and trite. Much of this has been driven by the vast availability of information available to buyers on the web. Research indicates that buyers aren’t engaging sales people until they are 60-70% through their sales process. Rightfully, the argument is that sales people must change–dramatically! Absolutely, no doubt……….. duhhhhh. Much of the discussion, however, is misdirected or at least misunderstood. The rise of the self educated customer doesn’t mean the sales person is unnecessary […]
What’s The Diagnosis?
My wife hates going to Doctors—I actually think that’s a basic intelligence test, I don’t think anyone likes going to Doctors. It’s impossible to get appointments, costs are skyrocketing, and the experience–well, I’ll stop there. About 6 weeks ago, I noticed her limping, so I asked if she was having problems with her leg or foot. She said she’d tripped earlier in the morning when she was on the golf course and her foot was bothering her. We both thought it would go away, ignored it for a few days, but then the pain was getting worse. I said, “Go […]
Metrics Matter, But Which Ones?
As sales people, we’re certainly familiar with metrics. There are all sorts of measures that are supposed to help us set priorities and drive our behaviors. The king of all metrics, hanging over our heads like the Sword of Damocles is quota–revenue, orders, whatever. Then we may have all sorts of other metrics. There may be activity metrics like the number of phone calls we need to make, the number of deals we have to have in our pipelines, and so forth. Sometimes, we have so many metrics, it’s difficult to determine which we should focus on, so we just do […]
It Still Is All About Implementation And Execution!
Over the past couple of weeks I’ve been engaged in a “discussion,” that is really more about “Mine is bigger and better than yours.” This particular discussion started with what I thought was the SEB’s particularly ill constructed argument that “Solution Selling Is Dead.” My purpose in this article is not to perpetuate that discussion. If you are curious, read my blog post–but more importantly read the comment stream. Unfortunately, we see and participate in those discussions too often. And too often, I think they miss the things that are most important to our customers. We get into discussions about methodology—and if we […]
The New “Office,” And Work Life
Perhaps dating myself, when I first started selling about 30 years ago, my business life was basically centered around my office and my customer locations. I was fortunate enough to have two offices–a cube in the bull pen at my company, one at my largest customer’s location. Most of my “work” was centered on those locations (Well, OK, I did spend a lot of time at Harry’s of Hanover Square). My day would usually start at my office at the customer. I’d meet with customers through the day. I’d wrap up the day in my office at my company–usually to research […]